Chapter 7: Terms

The old elder drove down from Harrow Ridge himself, in a car that smelled of liniment, to hear our terms.

"An alliance needs a witness," he said, setting a notebook on Kurt's long study table.

"Otherwise it's only two people agreeing in a room."

Kurt sat at one end of the table with his sleeves pushed up.

I sat at the other, with Dessa's scan strip in my coat pocket and my mother's deed in front of me.

"First," I said. "You stand with me at the moot, and you don't speak for me."

"I'll stand beside you," said Kurt. "I won't speak unless you ask."

"Second. I give you the river markers and what Torin promised Margo's family."

"You give me a roof and a seat in the room."

"Agreed."

"Third, you don't ask me to forgive anyone."

"I wouldn't."

The elder wrote it all down in a cramped hand and licked his pencil.

"The treaty ends at the moot," he said.

"Whatever happens, you can both walk out of it clean. Is there a fourth term?"

Kurt looked down the table.

"Yes," he said. "The pack is one thing. The bed is another."

I felt the elder's pencil stop.

"I don't use an alliance to get close to her," Kurt said, "and she doesn't use it to get rid of me."

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